A Scenic Maritime Byway 



By T. Edward Nickens 

 Photographs by Scott D. Taylor 



The 



I he Intracoastal Waterway is a 

 3,000-mile dredged navigation channel 

 lying just inland of the shoreline of eastern 

 America. The "Big Ditch," as it is some- 

 times called, runs unfettered from New 

 York to Florida, then north and westerly 

 along the Gulf coast to Brownsville, Texas. 

 It's a critical lane of protected water that 

 skirts the Atlantic's storm tides and rough 

 seas. If you are a tugboat captain, you might 

 use the waterway to push barges loaded 

 with phosphate or pieces of a space shuttle. 

 If you are a shrimper, you might use the 

 waterway for access to inshore trawling 

 grounds. If you own a power or sailing 

 yacht, you might use the channel to make 

 the run from your home in the North to, 

 well, your other home in the Caribbean. 



Or if you're like us, and what you have 

 is a 2 1 -foot Bayliner, a full tank of gas and 

 three days to bum, you might spend a few 

 waterway days poking around the ruins of 

 old logging camps and moseying through 

 local museums where the headliners are a 

 pair of fleas dressed up like a bride and 

 groom. You might make time to chase 

 rattlesnakes, eat in Victorian mansions, and 

 putter past decrepit fish houses and 

 gleaming 100-foot power yachts. And along 

 the way you just might get a glimpse of a 

 separate world that exists on the fringe of 

 the shore, a waterway subculture of grizzled 

 old misfits on gnarly boats, of million-dollar 

 yachts and a 3,000-mile-long neighborhood. 



